


jigsaw

by ruruka



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, future foundation canon, naegi’s last brain cell finally gives up on him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 01:03:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16170413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka





	jigsaw

“So...we’re-we’re married?” Color claims him at the idea. “Like husbands...we walked down the aisle, exchanged vows and all that..? Oh, well, I guess that explains the ring, then.”

Slow as the rest, a nod bobs to his rambling wonder. More flush lights the contours of his face, a finger curled to the chin, a glossed look thrown elsewhere. “Jeez, it makes me kind of embarrassed to think about it. Standing up in front of all those people and everything. I guess it’s good that I don’t remember it, haha.”

Slow as the rest, Togami breathes one long note out, and mimics, “ _I guess_.”

It isn’t such a long while more at that table, the hardwood mahogany of his dining room, _their_ dining room and _their_ everything he’s shoving back into this empty skull and stomping it down packed. Empty, or drained to half full, an optimist would say, and optimism’s all that hasn’t slipped its way from his fingers. He remembers the school and he remembers the classes and he remembers, well, he remembers being told that a fall from such a height as he’d taken on his latest field mission had been enough to rattle his brain loose. Naegi Makoto remembers being the Naegi Makoto who’s sixteen and spritely, a freshman at Hope’s Peak in his beige uniform coat he’d sweat through the underarms of by the end of first block; and if he’s asked (which he has been), he can remember his friends he’d spent time with throughout breaks in the day, Maizono and Kuwata Leon and on a rare occasion the headmaster’s daughter that would sit in the common area with a book and Fukujuen and pretend to not be listening in on his conversations. And, oh, right right of course, _of course_ there’d been Togami Byakuya, pristine, elite, handsome mannered when it came to anything but commerce. He’d been friends with that girl with the big round glasses, right? The one who’d always sat behind him in class and lunch and recreation? Togami could just about toss bile up his throat.

So right, he can recall a Togami Byakuya who was sixteen and stupid and talked to him only in passing, only to spout off a session should his intellect for a subject be tickled. “You told me a lot about OOPArts,” Naegi had laughed about in the car. He himself hadn’t been able to choose between a mirroring, or a clench of the eyes’ burn. But at least, at very bottom scraping least, he remembers him, he isn’t just some stranger taking him home and calling it _their_ house and _their_ life and _their_ little kitty cat patterned tea cup set (Naegi’d laughed again when he spotted those in the dish drain, silencing himself upon it being said that he’d picked them out from the porcelain shop himself, and upon it being said that he’d been told to wash his cup the morning before leaving for his last mission, and Naegi had promised he’d get to it after work with a kiss on his cheek and a jaunt for the door Togami had sighed into following, and Togami had sighed into following no one but window shadows back into the kitchen after work two days post to wash them his own damn self).

He’s remembered. Not as his lover nor hardly his friend. He’s an acquaintance behind those warm hazel eyes. Being treated as one makes every finger tremble.

Vaguely, he wonders how the others can even pretend to be handling it; Asahina had dropped her smile the second her hug had been tensed within, though regained the same vigor to tell him he’d remember her in no time once he tried a bite of her homemade peach muffins (and Naegi had said he kind of rather didn’t care for fruit and peach least of all, so evident that he’d forgotten all these years he’s lied about loving Asahina’s homemade peach muffins just to save her from heartbreak). Next to shoot his shot had lumbered Hagakure, grief tucked beneath the soles of his department store shoes to display only sunshine for the other’s release from two days of intensive care. He doubts Hagakure would care much at all if Naegi’d been lobotomized and thrown back into society drooling onto his paperwork, he’d still be the same good old Naegichi for him to laugh with and beg bus fare from. He’ll get better, we’ve all been through this before- that’s the logic, because all the fourteen of them whittled down to six had suffered amnesia once before and recovered, there’s no question in anyone’s mind that Naegi will recover from it a second time with the help of the same methods as the first. Those same methods had come from Division Four’s Ultimate Pharmacist and her ingenious hippocampus-stimulating serum that she’s got no more of and takes weeks to produce a dose. Right. No question.

Only he _knows_ there is, and it’s trapped within the labyrinth of Kirigiri Kyouko’s ugly self-righteous head. She’d been on that mission with him. He resents the ground she walks on. At the same time, he’s sure she feels alike in her penitence, just drowning in it, and even so much as he yearns to spit _good_ and prowl off away, there’s that certain sense that the situation’s not her fault at all, that Naegi’s been branded _reckless_ since the moment he’d taken his job at the Future Foundation, and catching an adversary before they could slip off the rooftop ledge had been all the more important to him than his own goddamned safety, that insufferable fucking Naegi Makoto. What had he told him, _what had he told him?_ Wash your teacup- no, no later than that, at the office before he and Kirigiri had departed for their routine little gallop into the outskirts of Towa. _Be careful._ And he’d kissed his lips and sent him off, and that was the last time he’d ever know his Naegi Makoto who knows him right back.

“...I’m sorry about all this, Togami,” sears him fresh at every joint. It calls him up regardless to glance across the table, focus his gaze that’s been lost a while now. Naegi is looking at him softly. “I-If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you, maybe cleaning, or something-?”

“Makoto.” Now he’s certain he’s sitting with a whole new person- his Makoto would eat Cocoa Puffs with a butter knife before washing a spoon. But even still- the damn _imbecile._ “There’s nothing that can be done to make anything up to me. This outcome wasn’t in your control- and a little bit of _dusting_ isn’t going to bring my husband back.”

He abhors the way the comment draws a flinch. “I’m sorry. I...I _want_ to remember everything I forgot about. Like you, and all my other friends-”

“Other _friends,”_ he seethes through locked jaws. Sooner than later he’ll have to learn to put a leash on that casual temper he’s got; gone away with memory faded the ability to wave off what’s accustomed to. Togami allows himself an exhale to rest fingers at each temple, look him straight on aside sorrow. “...It isn’t your fault. You’re just an idiot.”

“Eh...Ahah...ha?”

Togami rolls each his eyes.

That leaves them in the silent stink of unknowing where next to roll, what to say to this stranger at his dining room table who hadn’t even known where the bathroom was and hadn’t returned from it for a good twenty one minutes post. The midnight mask shrouding who he once loved and still does so strongly it burns, this stranger at his dining room table who’s making him sorry he ever tried. Something melts him then, just perhaps hooks him back from slipping again into dirty nasty thought, wherein the room breathes a sudden three by feet clapping hard to the dining table top.

“Oh!” Naegi’s hands waste not a moment in sharing their softness to the newcomer. “You have a cat?” 

“ _You_ have a cat,” he tips, watching brown fur sleek beneath the other’s touch. “I just live with it. ...His name is Bottlecap.” Somewhere inside, he hopes that it’ll stroke his memory at all to hear, though Naegi can only pinch his face and say, “That’s a funny name.”

Togami must agree. The cat flicks its tail in a waddle across the table toward him. Naegi’s hands fold in his lap, eyes trained toward the animal in its leap for the ground again, heavy, reverberating. “I had a dog when I was little, have I told you about that? His-”

“His name was Haruki, he was a Golden Retriever because your father had been going through a Western-obsession phase. You and your sister ate bologna sandwiches for lunch everyday in middle school.” 

On instinct, his tongue prods from his mouth, smirking around age old disgust. The urge to cover him in kisses takes a back seat to listening. “Sooo I have told you, then. I’ve probably told you everything, huh? ...Why don’t you tell me about you?”

His pressed slack tie clipped job-interview tone sickens Togami to the tips of his toes, but he ventures on still, leans the slightest touch forward to rest hands at the knees, a lick coasting the lips. “...What are you unsure of?”

That gets him thinking, finger to the lip, dropped back down to fiddle with the ring on the thirdmost. Naegi’s shoulders contract himself smaller. “I know we were classmates...aaand you didn’t really like me very much. But-But maybe you did. You talked to me sometimes, like I said. Just acted like you were mad at me a lot, like you are now.” Then he laughs, from nowhere, seemingly, and taps every finger along the mahogany table top. “I never expected we’d be _married-_ maybe me and Maizono, or even Asahina-“

“You like the more chest than brains type, I’m aware.” Togami stumbles into a dark glaze over his eyes. “...You and I became close after high school. After...everything Munakata and Yukizome explained to you.”

“Oh- the end of the world?”

He pauses only protracted enough to adjust his lenses up the nose, blink once and nod along to him. “We work together, I explained that to you. I run the fourteenth branch-“ 

“I thought Kirigiri said she runs the-“

“We run the fourteenth branch, and you work beneath us. Hagakure as well.”

“And Fukawa?”

“Who? Oh. I suppose.” His hands move to fold atop the table. “You and I became close, perhaps I fell a bit in love with you and you myself, we dated for three years and were married last winter.”

“Wow,” breathes the receptor. “We’re married...we live together...and we have a cat. Wait- we don’t have kids, do we?”

“Not yet,” he tells him, voice very soft and voice very slow, because he’s looking at him now, across the table, across two worlds begging to melt back into one, and he’s gorgeous as all hell even with the single digit IQ. His love. “Someday.”

Again, Naegi hangs onto an exhale. “Good, I can’t imagine not remembering my own children… This is bad enough.” A lean back against his chair, “Really bad.”

Togami moves to steeple his fingers before the mouth that wishes words, though they are stolen into that of another who’s the sudden whip righted in hollow eyed dolor. “I’m sorry. I...I’m sure I do love you, Togami, I just...don’t feel it.”

_Don’t do it,_ he demands of his self control. _Don’t cry in front of him._

Decades pass with the flick of light through his irises. “There’s guest rooms upstairs. You can stay in there until you’re more comfortable.”

“...Right,” Naegi nods, and that’s the last they speak of it.

Within the hour he’s shut in his bedroom, in _their bedroom_ with the pretty chiffon that smells so sad. He’s shut in his bedroom, a single grain of pleasure among this full beachfront of turmoil; Naegi would tell him to get some fresh air and stretch his muscles, massage his shoulders, ask him what he’d like for dinner. Asshole.

His legs swivel to tuck into the comforter after some while of working on whatever doesn’t need it. He’s had his shower, scrubbed the flush from his face and the rivulet stains atop, viable to relax though quite certain he’d rather not. He hungers for the dinner he’s missed and the days he’s drowned in. A week night’s prior would grant him better, warmth to the side that outlasts this solitude. But- it’s there, quick and sudden, makes him blink to the open air of glasses folded on his nightstand. Warmth and a sweet weight sans warning on the bed, because he’s been asleep under the bed all along, as evident by the dust bunny crowding his face. Bottlecap sneezes.

Head to board, Togami sighs. From the slits of his eyes, he watches the cat pad across the blanket over toward him. Ears nudge his palm, which strokes him crest to tail. “Hi.”

Time glides enough for his back to ache for rest, found in flat laying. Bottlecap wastes no moment before he’s folded up like Wonderbread at the top of his chest, purring, purring, soothing. Togami kisses his nose just one quick note, and then there sounds a tap of knuckles upon his door.

“...Togami?” comes to chase it. He shifts in a bolt that ditches the cat back for the floor, hair primped in fingertips and throat cleared to find a voice to answer with. The knob tilts ever subtle.

And his heart races thrice the pace. His husband who doesn’t love him is standing there in his bedroom’s threshold, done up in gray joggers and a faded tee like he likes to wear to sleep when there’s no twice-the-size button down to steal; he’d picked up some things from his drawers in this room, had asked where he keeps his socks and had the bed’s underneath gestured for. Naegi had laughed then. Togami hadn’t.

“What is it?” his tone is soft and concerned, almost, yet still behind that steel edge to keep him at bay. Naegi clutches an elbow in one hand, tipping forward past the hallway halo light to stare at him closer.

“I...I…” His lips hardly dare to part a full length. “I wanted to say goodnight.”

Cold rushes his lungs. He nods to him, and Naegi’s head tilts like it does when he’s up to something stupid, Togami knows, shooting back a raise of one brow. Naegi smiles then, relenting his gaze to peer for the warmth curling around his ankles. Out the door saunters Bottlecap. He watches Naegi’s simper widen.

“I actually was wondering if I could ask you something,” he murmurs, thieving their stares locked straight. Togami nods him onward, makes him squirm in his own anxieties. “Do you know- well, of course _you_ know, but I was thinking maybe...if you retraced your steps to how you made me fall for you,” he swallows hard. “Maybe...Maybe that would help.” 

Lashes kiss his cheekbones. Decades. Minutes. Togami peers to the threshold angel dripping gold from his sorry heart all over their clean hardwood.

“It may,” he allows, tips his chin unto his knuckles. “Though I don’t know how I could replicate such effortless allure. You’ll have to be patient.” 

A wavering claims his lips. He ducks his palm over them, turns himself round the corner of the door to say back, “Goodnight, sweetheart.”

In their bedroom, he’s never felt quite so freshly smitten.


End file.
